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Saturday, 18 July 2009

Clarification on Islam

It's been pointed out that a minor Australian Sabbatarian ministry teaches that originally Islam was in some sense an embodiment of the Church of God. The leader of this group even goes as far as saying that Mohammad enjoined Sabbath observance, and that the Qur'an is a "commentary" on the Bible.

Clearly this is not what was implied in the recent AW post. In fact, in my opinion, it's complete rubbish. The Jewish Christians of Arabia certainly seem to have influenced Islam, but they were very different from what passes for the Church of God today, whether based in Cincinnati, Charlotte, Edmond or Canberra. In fact, if you do any reading on these Jewish Christian believers, you can't help but be struck by how different and strange they seem, rather than by the similarities.

The history of early Christianity is fascinating, but there is an awful lot we don't know. For example one scholar, Ray Pritz, contends that the group called Nazarenes were distinct from the Ebionites, and develops an apologetic reconstruction that must sit nicely with conservative, mainstream Christians. I don't buy that for a single moment (see Bob Price's review of the Pritz book.) The point is that history is often frustratingly fuzzy on the specifics. Sect leaders who turn speculation into dogma are not in the same business as cautious historians and scholars: let the buyer beware. How Jewish and Christian belief (along with Jewish-Christian belief) impacted on Islam may be an overlooked but interesting story, but how does that authorise, legitimate or lend credibility to any modern, unrelated Sabbatarian sect?

It doesn't. It does provide a lesson in humility, however, for those who want to use history as an ideological weapon in the service of doctrine.

All religions borrow from those that went before. Second Temple Judaism borrowed from Zoroastrianism (Satan, resurrections), early Christianity was as syncretistic as any other movement, Islam learned its monotheism in part from sectarian Christians and Jews, Herbert Armstrong raided the bottom drawers of Adventism, British-Israelism and the Mormons. And so it goes.

3 comments:

Anonymous
said...

"All religions borrow from those that went before. "

maybe you hope that's the case, but it's not. if you had said that all religions have a bit of the truth, then we would agree. satan is an excellent counterfeiter, and a counterfeit must have the appearance of the genuine in order to be accepted.since most aren't familiar enough with the genuine to recognize it, they are easily duped by the counterfeit.

"Second Temple Judaism borrowed from Zoroastrianism (Satan, resurrections), early Christianity was as syncretistic as any other movement, Islam learned its monotheism in part from sectarian Christians and Jews, Herbert Armstrong raided the bottom drawers of Adventism, British-Israelism and the Mormons. And so it goes."

And so it goes, and so it goes. This sentence should be on a plaque in front of every hotel room where CoG splinters meet, Gavin.

I would agree that Pritz’s thesis maintaining a distinction between Nazarenes and Ebionites is not sustainable based on what scanty information has come down to us. The Church Fathers generally used the terms “Nazarene” and “Ebionite” interchangeably, though they did distinguish between at least two kinds of “Nazarene/Ebionite.” It wasn’t until St. Epiphanius that any Christian writer distinguished “Nazarenes” from “Ebionites,” but not long after that St. Jerome again used the terms interchangeably. Though these reference works are about a century old, the articles in the old Catholic Encyclopedia and Jewish Encyclopedia provide a handy outline of what is known of the Nazarenes/Ebionites (and we don’t really know that much more today than we did a hundred years ago), showing why Pritz’s thesis is almost certainly wrong.

http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/05242c.htm

http://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/view.jsp?artid=140&letter=N

And of course you’re absolutely correct that history shows no “genealogy” or direct succession starting with Jesus and the Apostles and coming down to modern Armstrongist sects by way the Nazarenes. “Successionism” or “Landmarkism” is simply not based on history. The various ancient and medieval sects claimed as ancestral to Armstrongism had little if any beliefs or practices in common with Armstrongism, nor any historical connection to Armstrongism. The historical origins of the Worldwide Church of God and its numerous offshoots such as the Meredith, Flurry, Hulme, or Tkach sects are well documented. Herbert Armstrong’s sect was a splinter of the Church of God (Seventh-Day), which was a splinter of the Seventh-Day Adventists, who grew out of the Baptists (including influence from the Seventh-Day Baptists, though with no direct organisational tie), who grew out of the English Puritans, who were members of the Church of England, which was severed from the Catholic Church by King Henry VIII. Nazarenes, Ebionites, Quartodecimans, Paulicians, Bogomils, Albigensians, Cathars, Petrobrusians, Henricians, Arnoldists, Passigenes, Waldensians, Lollards, and Anabaptists cannot be found anywhere in the Armstrongist genealogy.

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